What makes human beings intentional and thinking subjects? How does their intentionality and thought connect with their social nature and their communal experience? How do the answers to these questions shape the assumptions which it is legitimate to make in social explanation and political evaluation? These are the broad-ranging issues which Pettit addresses in this novel study. The Common Mind argues for an original way of marking off thinking subjects, in particular human beings, from other intentional systems, natural and (...) artificial. It holds by the holistic view that human thought requires communal resources while denying that this social connection compromises the autonomy of individuals. And, in developing the significance of this view of social subjects--this holistic individualism--it outlines a novel framework for social and political theory. Within this framework, social theory is allowed to follow any of a number of paths: space is found for intentional interpretation and decision-theoretic reconstruction, for structural explanation and rational choice derivation. But political theory is treated less ecumenically. The framework raises serious questions about contractarian and atomistic modes of thought and it points the way to a republican rethinking of liberal commitments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Makes the Common Good Common?Key Points from Charles De Koninck1Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.In even the most capable philosophical hands, the common good remains a slippery concept. Its essence eludes the grasp of those who reach for it. This is due in part to the concept's complexity. "Common good" is composed of two rich, philosophically pregnant notions: goodness and commonness. Reflection on these two notions is (...) ancient, of course. How a thing is good has preoccupied philosophers since the dawn of time. How a thing may be common has exercised philosophers less throughout history, but even the ancients recognized that the question of a thing's commonness remains as intricate as the question of a thing's goodness. Despite their long philosophical history, however, the notions of goodness and commonness evade quick and easy description. Because they represent elemental characteristics of being itself, they share in being's fundamental mystery. As a result, millennia of reflection have not exhausted these notions' meanings. Like being, goodness and commonness require careful study by each generation, so that its intellectuals and teachers might clarify these notions' remaining secrets. Thus does each generation contribute to the perennial philosophy.When we modern and post-modern thinkers try to describe the common good, and thereby grapple with its notions of goodness and commonness, we find one of these two notions more elusive than the other. Which of the two might surprise us. It is not the common good's goodness. [End Page 739] Despite the philosophical confusions of our age, we more or less still agree publicly as to what constitutes a good, and as a result what constitutes an evil. We deem health a good, for example, while we deem disease an evil. We embrace one as perfective; we repulse the other as destructive. To my knowledge, no one has yet extolled COVID-19 as a good. So, we moderns and post-moderns have not completely lost hold of reality. We still share a sense of goodness, even if our generation mislabels some evils as goods.When it comes to describing the common good, therefore, it is not the common good's goodness that eludes us. Rather, it is its commonness that we have difficulty grasping. What does it mean for a good to be common? How is a common good common? Are all common goods common in the same way? How is the example of health common? Is health a common good properly speaking, or does it only appear to be common? How do we know the difference? Is there a difference? Unfortunately, few of us can answer these questions well. The reasons may not all be our fault, but we should admit that, along with our secular contemporaries, we remain largely unversed in commonness. A sign of our inexperience with the concept is that we seldom ask questions about commonness. Instead, we take it for granted that we know what commonness involves. When pressed to describe it, however, we quickly discover just how uncommon understanding of commonness is.In the first half of the last century, Charles De Koninck was well aware of modernity's inexperience with commonness. He recognized that individualism and its philosophical prerequisites had so captured the popular imagination, even among Catholics, that the common quality of the common good was disappearing from view. As a result, political discourse—to say nothing of political life—had entered serious difficulty. Between the World Wars, De Koninck spoke up among Catholic philosophers to remind them of the "primacy of the common good," not simply as a practical concept but as a speculative one, in accord with its classical conception.De Koninck recalled for his contemporaries not only that but also how commonness, like goodness, is primarily something objectively real and metaphysically constituted, and only secondarily something subjectively perceived and practically useful. To revive the objective and metaphysical notions of goodness and commonness among Catholic intellectuals—many of whom had traded these for easier subjective and practical notions2—De [End Page 740] Koninck composed his famous essay The Primacy of the Common Good, Against the Personalists.3 In it, De Koninck spends eighty pages reviewing the objective... (shrink)

Rhodes seeks to defend her ‘conclusion that everyday ethics and medical ethics [are] incompatible’.1 She challenges ‘views that medical ethics is nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters’ (Rhodes, p2).1 Beauchamp and Childress explicate the term ‘common morality’ at length.2 Nowhere do they claim that medical ethics is ‘nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters’. Here is what they do say: “The origin of the norms of the common morality is no different (...) in principle from the origin of the norms of a particular morality for a medical or other profession … The primary difference is that the common morality has authority in all communities, whereas particular moralities are authoritative only for specific groups” (Beauchamp and Childress, p8).2 This critique discusses the seven examples Rhodes uses to illustrate her main point: that common morality and medical ethics are radically different. I contend that common morality accounts for the purported differences she cites. In ordinary life, people can simply mind their own business, whereas physicians have a duty to act in their professional setting. On this view, common morality cannot explain the moral obligation people have to prevent easily avoidable harm to others. A bystander …. (shrink)

It is known today that Hegel's philosophy was at the center of the development of pragmatism. In particular, the relation of Dewey's philosophy to Hegel's has recently been studied with great attention1. Many studies have revealed that the German philosopher had a fundamental influence on the young John Dewey, particularly with regard to his theory of culture, for his logic, as well as for his psychology. These new readings propose a profoundly original view of Dewey and explain why he (...) thought of his philosophy as a "permanent Hegelian deposit".Our work aims to... (shrink)

Abstract.This article is written with a view to clarifying the following points: First, to understand the nature of possession, its origin must be kept in mind. Possession is not a legal invention, it is a pre‐legal fact. Second, possession whether in law or in common sense is a de facto control. There is no difference between possession in law and possession in fact. Third, different types of rules and policies of law to deal with possession, do not change (...) the contents of possession. They merely represent the situations in which possession is found under different circumstances. (shrink)

The Molyneux question asks: would a blind person, who knows spheres and cubes only from touch, be able to recognize these shapes visually immediately upon becoming sighted, without touching them? Molyneux himself answered no. Locke accepted Molyneux’s negative answer. But Locke’s answer appears inconsistent with the doctrine of common sensibles, according to which some ideas are given in more than one sense modality. Motivated by alleviating this tension, philosophers have put forth several interpretations of Locke’s views on shape perception. (...) Here I motivate a novel interpretation of Locke that can better resolve the tension. (shrink)

On the view that Nicholas Adams advocates in ‘Alternatives to Moral Common Ground’, ethics is complicit in undermining the commitments that constitute our moral lives, because by forcing us to articulate those commitments they lose their hold on us. In this paper I take Adams’ views as a starting point to explore the idea that ethics might be complicit in undermining our moral lives. Aiming to shed light on the relation between reflection and commitment, I will do (...) two things. First, I try to explain why ethics, as a reflective enterprise, undermines the unspoken hold our commitments have on us. Second, I will explore the idea that reflection is destructive in the sense that it falsifies our pre-reflective commitments. (shrink)

Whereas bioethicists generally consider medicine a practice aimed at the individual good of each patient, in this paper I present an alternative conception of the goods of medicine. I first explain how modern liberal political theory gives rise to the predominant view of the medical good and then contrast this understanding of politics with that of Thomas Aquinas, informed by Aristotle. I then show how this Christian politics is implicit in certain aspects of contemporary medical practice and argue that (...) Christians ought to draw more attention to this point in order to direct medicine toward the common good. (shrink)

Philosophers concerned with the character of scientific disputes tend to divide into two camps. On the one side there are those who hold that scientists can always settle their differences by appealing to shared assumptions; on the other side there are those who maintain that in many cases scientists must resort to (nonrational ) persuasion to establish their views. The trouble is that for all their strong points both approaches labour under enormous difficulties. Scientific disagreement is often much deeper than (...) the first conception allows while persuasion, propaganda and the like are far less prevalent than the second one requires. On examining scientific practice is becomes clear that philosophers on both sides err in supposing that scientists can resolve their differences in a purely scientific fashion just to the extent that they can single out one of their views on the basis of assumptions that they hold in common. For one thing scientists make progress even though they rarely employ the strategy of reversion to neutral territory. And for another the strategy of reversion to neutral territory is at odds with the important methodological requirement that all relevant information be taken into account. Instead of thinking of scientists as resolving their differences by reviewing their respective positions in the light of their shared assumptions, we should think of them as fashioning positions on which they can agree, as arguing to shared conclusions rather than from shared premises. The relevant picture is one of scientists gradually narrowing the distance that separates them, of their converging on a mutually acceptable viewpoint. Far from being prerequisites for scientists' resolving their disputes, shared assumptions are what result from their managing to resolve them. How scientists who disagree deeply make progress is thus much less of a problem than is usually supposed. What determines whether scientists' conclusions constitute advances is not wether they were obtained by the expedient of reversion to neutral territory but whether each of the available options was fully ventilated. When scientists take into account all the relevant considerations (including those introduced into the discussion by their opponents and those that they can reasonably be expected to know), the question of whether they can be said to have made progress no longer arises. More generally, we misconstrue the manner in which scientists resolve their differences because we allow ourselves to be guided by our philosophical preconceptions about scientific knowledge and we devote insufficient attention to what happens in practice. Instead of exploring how scientists reason to mutually acceptable conclusions, we wrongly assume that they cannot but proceed by reverting to neutral territory. What is needed is not a general account of consensus formation but rather a fresh look at the multitude of ways in which scientists make progress by dint of argument and debate. Considered as a phenomenon in its own right scientific disagreement poses no special problem; it is puzzling only when it is considered within the framework of traditional epistemology. (shrink)

We define infinitary extensions to classical epistemic logic systems, and add also a common belief modality, axiomatized in a finitary, fixed-point manner. In the infinitary K system, common belief turns to be provably equivalent to the conjunction of all the finite levels of mutual belief. In contrast, in the infinitary monotonic system, common belief implies every transfinite level of mutual belief but is never implied by it. We conclude that the fixed-point notion of common (...) belief is more powerful than the iterative notion of common belief. (shrink)

이 글은 미국의 법학자이자 법철학자인 프레더릭 샤워[Frederick Schauer, (1946~)]의 법적 추론에 대한 견해를 해설한 글이다. 특히 그의 저서, Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Harvard University Press, 2009; 이하 ‘이 책’), 혹은 필자가 이를 번역하여 출간하고자 하는 『법률가처럼 사고하는 법』(도서출판 길, 2019 출간 예정)을 주요 대상으로 한다. 필자는 저자의 논지를 요약하고 재구성하고자 하며, 이를 통해 독자들이 이 책이나 해당 번역서를 이해하는 데에 작으나마 도움이 되기를 기대한다. 샤워는 이 책에서 보통법계가 유구한 논의와 실천 속에서 발전시켜 온 법적 (...) 추론의 주요한 특질이 무엇인지를 드러내고 있다. 샤워는 규칙, 선례, 유추 등 법적 추론의 여러 단면에서 드러나는바 법에는 분명 다른 분야와 다른 점이 있음을 강조한다. 이 때 법의 ‘특별한’(특별히 다른) 점이란, 법적 의사결정이 해당 사안에 대한 최선의 결정을 추구한다기보다는 규칙이나 선례라는 권위적 형식을 통해 과거에 이미 획득된 바 있는 지혜에 다시금 기대려 한다는 것이다. 나아가 법의 이러한 특성은, 판결을 통한 규칙의 변화, 법률해석, 판결 이유 설시 등을 관통하는 보통법적 사법 관행이나, 규칙과 규준 사이의 위치 설정, 당사자주의와 배제적 증거규칙과 같이 법적 사실을 확정하는 제도적 기제, 그리고 입증책임·추정·존중위임의 제도와 법리를 통해 의사결정 권한을 배분하는 보통법의 제도적 양상에서도 공통적이고 일관되게 발견된다는 것이다. 아울러 이러한 권위적이고 반직관적인 추론 및 의사결정 방식은 법적 의사결정에서 특히 전형적으로 나타나며 보통법의 역사에서 경험적으로 확인된다는 것이다. 샤워에 따르면, 법적 사고의 본령은 법치를 지향하는 상이한 두 가치 군(群) 사이의 길항과 형량에 있다. 권위, 형식, 예측가능성과 안정성 등 형식적 가치와, 올바름과 자유, 실질적 정의, 그리고 유연성 등 실질적 가치 사이에서 말이다. 법이 이러한 길항 속에서 대체로 실질적 가치보다는 형식적 가치의 손을 들어 준다고 본다는 점에서 샤워의 입장은 ‘형식주의적’이다. 다만 법적 추론에서 형식적 가치가 실질적 가치와 변증적으로 절충될 수 있는 여지가 열려 있다고 본다는 점에서 그의 입장은 ‘온건한 형식주의’라 할 수 있다. 이처럼 법이 다르다는 것은 법을 공부한 이후에나 법률가로서의 훈련을 받은 이후에는 분명 세계를 보는 방식과 세상의 문제를 다루는 방식에서 그전과는 다를 것임을 시사한다. 법학도나 법률가는 그전과 다른 눈으로 세상을 바라보며, 나아가 그전과는 다른 세상 속에 살게 된다는 것이다. (shrink)

International organisations are actors capable of bearing moral responsibilities and ought to be accountable for their failures in doing so. However, we should understand these responsibilities and respond to their failures in the light of fuller considerations about morality and the common good. The article argues that the international community should ensure victims are attended to, but also that defaulting institutions may themselves need rehabilitation for different kinds of international common purposes to be achievable. Further, the ways in (...) which both goals are agreed and undertaken must recognise multiple perspectives, else the possibilities for durable peaceable cooperation internationally will be damaged. Even in a world of plural views, we can find sufficient proximity on matters of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to move toward further agreement. Drawing on Braithwaite, Rawls, and Sunstein, the article argues we should search out and build on such ‘islands of agreement’ on wrongs in international life and on mutually respectful ways of responding to them. (shrink)

The chapter rehearses the main outlines of gatekeeping contextualism—the view that it is central to the concept of knowledge that attributions of knowledge function in a kind of epistemic gatekeeping for contextually salient communities. The case for gatekeeping contextualism is clarified within an extended discussion of the character of philosophical reflection. The chapter argues that normatively valenced, evaluative concepts constitute a broad class of concepts for which a sociolinguistic point or purpose may be readily sensed—and for which the (...) intimate connection between point/purpose and the concept itself is readily understandable. Commonly at the inception of philosophical reflection one’s sense for the point or purpose of a specific concept is seldom highly articulate. The chapter argues that this does not prevent one’s grasp of point/purpose from doing real work in philosophical reflection. (shrink)

In “Medical Ethics: Common or Uncommon Morality,”1 Rosamond Rhodes defends a specialist view of medical ethics, specifically the ethics of physicians. Rhodes’s account is specifically about the ethics of medical professionals, rooted in what these professionals do. It would seem to follow that other healthcare professions might be subject to ethical standards that differ from those applicable to physicians, rooted in what these other professions do, but I leave this point aside for purposes of this commentary. Rhodes’s (...) view includes both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that precepts in medical ethics—understood as the ethics of physicians—cannot be derived from principles of common morality. The positive thesis is two-fold: that precepts in medical ethics must be derived from an account of the special nature of what physicians do, and that this account is to be understood through an overlapping consensus of rational and reasonable medical professionals. While I agree emphatically with, and have learned a great deal from, Rhodes’s defense of the negative thesis, I disagree with both claims in Rhodes’s positive thesis, for reasons I will now explain after a brief observation about the negative thesis. (shrink)

In this paper I contrast some widespread ideas about what Wittgenstein said about religious belief with statements Wittgenstein made about his purposes and method in doing philosophy, in order to argue that he did not hold the views commonly attributed to him. These allegedly Wittgensteinian doctrines in fact essentialize religion in a very un-Wittgensteinian way. A truly Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion can only be a personal process, and there can be no part in it for generalized hypotheses or conclusions about (...) religion in general. Why is it that in this case I seem to be missing the entire point?1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 329 I find Farley's theory of tragic existence and divine compassion distressing and depressing. To sufferers, it says: "C'est la vie!" Put more learnedly, "created perfection is fragile, tragically structured.. •. And yet, without creation, divine eros remains merely potential, inarticulate. The fragility of creation and the nonabsolute power of God culminate in the tragedy and rupture of history" (p. 124). Thank God, I can now have (...) God,to blame. Of course, God is trying to repair the damage, but even God's efforts are ultimately vain since "absolute evil " will ever play havoc with history and since God himself is responsible for suffering. Furthermore, since the author does not offer any extensive discussion of the suffering and death of God.on the cross (she dismisses the idea: "The compassionate God is... to he distinguished from the benevolent but impotent deity who ' suffers with ' the world" [p. 112]), nor of the resurrection of Jesus as divine vindication of innocent suffering, nor of hope for a life beyond,· her tragic vision sheds no real light on the problem of suffering nor can it pro-.vide impetus for the struggle against evil or hope for victims-especially when demons whisper that life is futile, suffering meaningless, and the cosmos void. The book is repetitive (suffering: pp. 23-24, 30-31, 51-59, 115-119; tragic vision: pp. 31-37, 78-79, 98-99, 106-110, 124-125; compassion: pp. 37-39, 79-81, 92-94, 110-114, 114-119, 126-128). It is oracular ("theologians have been uncomfortable about directly attributing love to God " [p. 96], self-contradictory (it speaks of God's " aseity " and divine " relationship " in the same breath [p. 105]), and misleading in its use of sources (e.g. its appeal to Thomas for its peculiar understanding of analogical language about God [pp. 101-103]). Mercifully, the hook is brief. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. PETER c. PHAN Time, Freedom, and the Common Good. By CHARLES M. SHEROVER. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xiii+ 314. $59.50 (cloth) ; $19.95 (paper). Guided by the insights of traditional political philosophy and contemporary phenomenology and animated by 'the spirit of Tocqueville, Sherover's book is an attempt " to secure the foundations of a public philosophy adequate for our time" (p. xii). Like Tqcqueville, Sherover is preoccupied with the " universal appeal of freedom," with its com- 330 BOOK REVIEWS plications, its paradoxes, and especially its possibilities. Sherover faults liberalism for its simplistic conception of freedom and its " superficial view of the nature of human existence" (p. 8). In an attempt to find a more adequate account of human experience, Sherover appeals to three existential categories: sociality, temporality, and freedom. The project of the book, which moves from the establishment and articulation of these categories to :their practical application, is ambitious. Yet the argument is lucid and persuasive. Following Aristotle, Sherover argues for the primacy of the social in human life. He effectively argues not only that moral norms and linguistic practices are socially rooted phenomena, but also that " social membership is prior... to any notion of differentiating individuality " (p. 20). Social atomism is but a theoretical abstraction, and individualism is as incoherent as a private language. Sherover points out that the defense ·of the social nature of human existence has at least one negative result: it undermines political theories that are rooted in a radically individualistic conception of human nature. Yet the emphasis on sociality does play a positive role in Sherover's essay: it serves as an initial justification of the relevance of the idea of the common good to political discourse. The existential category of sociality surfaces, for instance, in Sherover's cogent account of rights, wherein he argues that particular rights should not be seen as innate and absolute. The claim that rights are innate renders unintelligible the prevalent notion of "newly dis· covered" rights (p. 79). Instead, particular rights are socially recog· nized, justifiable claims which cannot he isolated from the social and political context in which they are recognized and exercised. Particular r.ights come into being over time and in intimate connection with con· crete... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Cosmic Common Good: Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics by Daniel P. ScheidJohn J. FitzgeraldThe Cosmic Common Good: Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics Daniel P. Scheid new york: oxford university press, 2016. 264 pp. $31.95Published shortly after the first encyclical to focus on the environment (Pope Francis's Laudato Si'), Daniel Scheid's first book is a significant advance in Christian ethics and religious ecology. Scheid argues that (...) resources in Catholic social thought and other religious traditions can move one to an appreciation of a common good that includes the "more than human world" (xiv). In particular, he "aim[s] (1) to extend Catholic social thought ecologically, and (2) to extend Catholic ecological ethics comparatively" (8).The argument begins by broadening the notion of the common good into a "Catholic cosmic common good," which "emphasizes the centrality of God, the goodness of creation, and humanity's dignified and privileged but contextualized role within the story of creation" (32). This vision is then informed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Thomas Berry. Next, Scheid widens solidarity, a virtue that (per John Paul II) involves "commit[ting] oneself to the common good" (86), into "Earth solidarity," which attends to all ecosystems and species, particularly those most impacted by environmental damage. Solidarity cannot be exercised without respecting others' rights, and Scheid contends that these include "Earth rights" of biota, abiota, and ecosystems. Finally, in order to really "test the potential for the cosmic common good as a ground for interreligious ecological ethics" (124–25), he turns to three non-Abrahamic traditions that each support, augment, and challenge elements of his vision. A Hindu dharmic ecology is theocentric and blurs the line between humans and nonhumans, Buddhist traditions are nontheistic and highlight how all are [End Page 197] interrelated, and American Indians (specifically the Lakota) condemn individualism and demonstrate certain advantages of a more spatial (rather than simply temporal) perspective.The Cosmic Common Good covers an impressive range of thought in under two hundred pages of main text. While the argumentation is intricate, the logical ordering of chapters, the repetition of important points, and some vivid examples assist the reader in following along. The case for Earth rights is especially bold and well argued; Scheid considers objections to them and shows that they can be intelligibly grounded (as prima facie and proportionately weighted) in self-governance and creaturely dignity. This is a very promising development in Catholic social thought, as recent key magisterial teachings do not explicitly affirm that animals have dignity (or rights) but limit themselves to the notion that harming animals is "contrary to human dignity" (see Laudato Si', §§ 92, 130, quoting Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2418).While the book is generally comprehensive, there are a few surprising lacunae. First, although Scheid himself recognizes that "a properly Catholic ecological ethics would certainly not dismiss the centrality of the Bible" (198n16), there is very little reference to it. The author briefly alludes to the Psalms' portrayal of the natural world (47, 181), but more integration of the Old and New Testaments would have been illuminating. And while The Cosmic Common Good makes a commendable last-minute effort to incorporate insights from Laudato Si', Francis's predecessor Benedict XVI (often dubbed "the Green Pope") receives too-short shrift. Benedict's ecological views are referenced only on one page, perhaps because they are somewhat more anthropocentric than the "Earth-centered or cosmos-centered" ethic developed by Scheid (24). Regardless, the former pope's frequent calls for environmental responsibility to the poor, future generations, and animals would surely lend some healthy support to the cosmic common good. But these omissions do not detract much from the merits of this book, which should be read "not as a definitive conclusion but as an invitation to generate greater interreligious dialogue and cooperation on an issue that demands extensive and immediate action" (11). Professional academics, graduate students, and others who are somewhat versed in the sophisticated issues Scheid raises would do well to take up his invitation. [End Page 198]John J. FitzgeraldSt. John's University (New York)Copyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This commentary addresses three points. First, it is argued that the common coding principles, as developed in the target article, may supplement rather than replace stage views of human information processing. Second, the issue of the properties of an event code is briefly discussed. It is concluded that much remains to be specified so as to allow critical tests. Finally, the question of the limits of common coding is raised. It may be particularly relevant to direct perception and (...) action coupling but less useful for the analysis of cognitive skills. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce the notion of S ∗ p -partial metric spaces which is a generalization of S-metric spaces and partial-metric spaces. Also, we give some of the topological properties that are important in knowing the convergence of the sequences and Cauchy sequence. Finally, we study a new common fixed point theorems in this spaces.

"As Editor-in-Chief of World, Marvin Olasky has offered his views on current events and culture for more than twenty-five years. In this collection of columns, he shows readers how Christians can speak biblical truths while also living out the biblical values of grace and mercy in today's world."--From back of book.

In this 2004 book, Noah Lemos presents a strong defense of the common sense tradition, the view that we may take as data for philosophical inquiry many of the things we ordinarily think we know. He discusses the main features of that tradition as expounded by Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore and Roderick Chisholm. For a long time common sense philosophers have been subject to two main objections: that they fail to give any non-circular argument for the (...) reliability of memory and perception; and that they pick out instances of knowledge without knowing a criterion for knowledge. Lemos defends the appeal to what we ordinarily think we know in both epistemology and ethics and thus rejects the charge that common sense is dogmatic, unphilosophical or question-begging. Written in a clear and engaging style, this book will appeal to students and philosophers in epistemology and ethics. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of (...) them believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions. (shrink)

This book offers a major reinterpretation of the `secularization' of medieval ideas by examining scholastic discussions on the nature of the common good. It challenges the view that the rediscovery of Aristotle was the primary catalyst for the emergence of a secular theory of the state. A detailed exposition of the content and the context of late scholastic political and ethical thought reveals that the roots of medieval 'secularization' were profoundly theological.

Laura Odwazny and Benjamin Berkman have raised several challenges regarding the new reasonable person standard in the revised Common Rule, which states that in‐ formed consent requires potential research subjects be provided with information a reasonable person would want to know to make an informed decision on whether to participate in a study. Our aim is to offer a response to the challenges Odwazny and Berkman raise, which include the need for a reasonable person standard that can be applied (...) consistently across institutional review boards and that does not stigmatize marginal groups. In response, we argue that the standard ought to be based in an ordinary rather than ideal person conception of reasonable person and that the standard ought to employ what we call a liberal constraint: the reasonability standard must be malleable enough such that a wide variety of individuals with different, unique value systems would endorse it. We conclude by suggesting some of the likely consequences our view would have, if adopted. (shrink)

Wittgenstein likens philosophy both to an illness and to a therapy. The reflections he dedicates to mental disturbance in On Certainty shed some light on this ambivalence, by pointing at the intertwined themes of common sense, doubt, mistake, reasonableness, and normality. Wittgenstein’s remarks have sometimes been compared to the description of the symptoms of what psychopathologists have called the loss of natural self-evidence, or the loss of common sense. Besides briefly recalling some of the outcomes of this debate (...) in literature, I focus on Wittgenstein’s conception of “hinges”, the basic practical certainties which patients suffering from the loss of common sense seem to lack. By working on this comparison, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s idea of philosophy that clarifies both its insane and its therapeutic side. (shrink)

I deal with the issue of the environmental crisis from the perspective of a phenomenologically embedded qualitative social ontology. The first point I make is that our environment is a «personal world», and not a «naturalistic world»: a world that is experienced in the «personalistic attitude» and as such is an ontologically qualitative world, in which both natural and social entities are given to us as essentially constituted by value-qualities and meanings, and not as merely material things. The second (...) point I argue for is that our environment is also a «common-surrounding world» whose personal collectives are its essential correlate: «common-surrounding world» and personal collectives existentially depend on one another, and human persons, both individual and collective, are responsible for the existence of their environment and its entities. I apply the tools of phenomenological eidetics to the ideas of «personal world» and «common-surrounding world», and inquire into the ontologically qualitative implications that they have for our environment and its crisis. (shrink)

Two arcas of continuing interest to direct marketing professionals are the perceived myths and unethical practices in the field. Documentation of specific cases and more abstract discussion of these two points of interest frequently appear in the direct marketing literature (e.g. Gitlitz and Barton, 1983; Lewis, 1982; Pierce, 1985). Indeed, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has promulgated specific guidelines (DMA, 1985) for ethical business practices within the industry. Up to this point, however, there has been no attempt at a (...) systematic evaluation of the perceptions of professionals in the field.Such an evaluation of these two areas of practice would appear to beg the following questions: (1) What are the major common myths which abound in direct marketing as perceived by professionals who come into direct contact with the operations of direct marketing organizations? (2) Which of these so-called myths are most requently mentioned? (3) What are the most commonly perceived unethical practices? (4) Which of these unethical practices are most frequently mentioned by direct marketing professionals? (5) To what extent do these perceived unethical practices coincide with the industry's own guidelines? (shrink)

This paper advocates a realist position with respect to science and common sense. It considers the question of whether science provides knowledge of reality. It presents a positive response to that question. It rejects the anti-realist claim that we are unable to acquire knowledge of reality in favour of the realist view that science yields knowledge of the external world. But it remains to be specified just what world that is. Some argue that science leads to the rejection (...) of our commonsense view of the world. If so, the world about which science informs us is not the world of common sense. Common sense is “stone-age metaphysics”. It is false theory inherited from our primitive ancestors that is to be eliminated in favour of science. Against such an elimination of common sense, it is argued that science both preserves and explains our commonsense experience of the world. Science may well lead to the overthrow of some of our most deeply held beliefs. But common sense reflects a more basic and durable level of experience. Commonsense beliefs are well-confirmed beliefs that are vindicated by their role in successful practical action each and every day. Common sense provides a firm basis on which to base a realist philosophy of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment by T. J. GorringeLibby GibsonThe Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment T. J. Gorringe New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 309 pp. $90.00Building on arguments set forth in A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, and Redemption (2002), theologian Timothy Gorringe begins The Common Good and the (...) Global Emergency by exploring whether an idea of the common good is relevant in a multicultural society and, if so, how an account of the common good can give rise to an alternative economic paradigm grounded in grace. While respect for cultural differences and the rise of individualism may argue against a robust understanding of the common good, Gorringe looks to the concept of oikonomia, or household management, to express the concept of managing “our affairs in such a way as to further what we perceive to be good ends” (35). Since our understanding of the economy shapes every aspect of the built environment, Gorringe traces local, regional, and national economies to what Wendell Berry calls “the great economy” or God’s creation, redemption, and sustenance of all things.Gorringe grounds his arguments about the common good in his Trinitarian theology of the built environment, expressed as God the Creator, God the Reconciler, and God the Redeemer. The triune perichoretic nature of God is inherently relational; therefore, as humans made in God’s image, we cannot ignore our interdependence. While God the Creator offers a sense of the common good springs from creation, God the Reconciler gives Gorringe traction to discuss the many barriers—race, gender, class, and space—that divide human beings and how our built environments structure these separations. God the Redeemer is concerned with empowering human beings to challenge all things that destroy life; thus Gorringe sees his project as contributing a theology of liberation committed to justice and fullness of life for all humans.Gorringe argues that our best chance to identify a common good rests on constructively addressing the common bad that he calls the global emergency. This emergency can be seen in the doubling of the world’s population in the past forty years, the problem of climate change, and global resource depletion. Seeing climate change and food, water, and energy issues as among the most pressing ethical issues of the coming decades, Gorringe challenges the reader to examine how our current common values have degraded the environment [End Page 202] and the lives of people worldwide. Since he specifically addresses the built environment, Gorringe’s purview is necessarily anthropocentric and justified by the doctrine of incarnation. Yet the Creator God expresses great wisdom in the laws of nature, and much could be learned from the “built” environments in the animal kingdom. While this line of thought would clearly depart from the rigorous academic method of Gorringe’s analysis, the book arose from a feeling that the Lord instructed him to continue working in this area, and attending to other nonrational sources of wisdom could greatly enhance our understanding of God’s grace in all the world.Gorringe acknowledges that the chapters do not unfold linearly, and that he seeks to point out points of confluence. The fluidity with which he addresses theological, political, economic, architectural, sociological, and ethical issues leads the reader to an overall picture of the common good and its powers to liberate us from injustice while an exact map of this process may be difficult to draw. Gorringe clearly and directly addresses both critics and supporters of his previous work on the built environment and solidifies his case for attending to the ways that our built environments could express a common good, grounded in grace, that allows for the fullness of life for all beings.Libby GibsonVirginia Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

When interacting with others, we often use bodily signals to communicate. Among these signals, pointing, whether with the eyes or the hands, allows coordinating our attention with others, and the perception of pointing gestures implicates a range of social cognitive processes. Here, we review the brain mechanisms underpinning the perception and understanding of pointing, focusing on eye gaze perception and associated joint attention processes. We consider pointing gesture perception, but leave aside pointing gesture execution as it relates to a distinct (...) area of cognitive neuroscience research. We describe the attention orienting effects of pointing and the neural substrates for the perception of biological cues. We consider the multiple high-level social cognitive processes elicited by pointing gesture perception and examine how pointing gestures are related to the general taxonomy of gestures. We conclude by emphasizing that pointing is a social phenomenon and that a full account of pointing will require an integrative approach taking into account the distinct perspectives from which this phenomenon can be investigated. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen and Colin McGinn hold that there are strong arguments for strict incompatibilism, i.e. for the claim that the free will thesis (F) is inconsistent not just with determinism but with the negation of determinism as well. Interestingly, both authors deny that these arguments are apt to justify the claim that (F) is false. I argue that van Inwagen and McGinn are right in taking the fact that epistemic commitment to (F) is deeply rooted in common sense (...) to cast doubt on arguments to the conclusion that (F) is false. However, instead of declaring free will to be a mystery (van Inwagen) or claiming that the problem of free will amounts to a problem whose correct solution is cognitively closed to human intellect (McGinn), I propose to simply view the problem of free will as a hard problem – its hardness being due to the fact that it involves a large variety of concepts whose correct explication is philosophically moot. (shrink)

Realism and utopia usually represent antithetic political perspectives. In this essay I argue that these might find some common points by overtaking the secular interpretation they usually place on themselves.

We explore the evidential relationships that connect two standard claims of modern evolutionary biology. The hypothesis of common ancestry (which says that all organisms now on earth trace back to a single progenitor) and the hypothesis of natural selection (which says that natural selection has been an important influence on the traits exhibited by organisms) are logically independent; however, this leaves open whether testing one requires assumptions about the status of the other. Darwin noted that an extreme version of (...) adaptationism would undercut the possibility of making inferences about common ancestry. Here we develop a converse claim—hypotheses that assert that natural selection has been an important influence on trait values are untestable unless supplemented by suitable background assumptions. The fact of common ancestry and a claim about quantitative genetics together suffice to render such hypotheses testable. Furthermore, we see no plausible alternative to these assumptions; we hypothesize that they are necessary as well as sufficient for adaptive hypotheses to be tested. This point has important implications for biological practice, since biologists standardly assume that adaptive hypotheses predict trait associations among tip species. Another consequence is that adaptive hypotheses cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed by a trait value that is universal within a single species, if that trait value deviates even slightly from the optimum. 1 Two Darwinian hypotheses 2 Logical independence 3 How adaptive hypotheses bear on the tree of life hypothesis 4 How the tree of life hypothesis bears on adaptive hypotheses 5 What do adaptive hypotheses predict? 6 Common ancestry and quantitative genetics to the rescue 7 Conclusion. (shrink)

Originally published in 1985 and now re-issued with a new preface, this study assesses the two major moral theories of ethical consequentialism and common-sense morality by means of mutual comparison and an attempt to elicit the implications and tendencies of each theory individually. The author shows that criticisms and defences of common-sense morality and of consequentialism give inadequate characterizations of the dispute between them and thus at best provide incomplete rationales for either of these influential moral views. Both (...) theories face inherent difficulties, some familiar but others mentioned for the first time in this work. The argument proceeds by reference to historical figures like Bentham, Ross and Sidgwick and to contemporary thinkers such as Williams, Nagel, Hare and Sen. (shrink)

The notion of common morality plays a prominent role in some of the most influential theories of biomedical ethics. Here, I focus on Beauchamp and Childress’s models in the fourth and fifth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics as well as on a revision that Beauchamp proposed in a recent article. Although there are significant differences in these works that require separate analysis, all include a role for common morality as starting point and normative framework for theory (...) construction in combination with a coherence theory of moral justification. I defend to some extent the existence and empirical significance of common morality, as delineated by Beauchamp and Childress in different versions, but criticize its normative role. It is neither convincing as a moral foundation nor well compatible with a standard coherentist justification. I suggest that the authors should give up the foundational account for a more modest account of common morality as resource of well-established moral insights and experiences, which have proved generally valid but neither sufficient nor infallible. Beauchamp’s latest proposal appears as a step in this direction; indeed, it may be the beginning of the end of his common-morality theory. (shrink)

In this book, Amitai Etzioni, public intellectual and leading proponent of communitarian values, defends the view that no society can flourish without a shared ...

Alex John London’s new book, For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics highlights the fact that establishing just social arrangements is not only a matter of incentivizing popular will to act for the common good; it also requires filling in informational gaps about which policies, arrangements, and interventions will advance the basic interests of members in an equitable, effective and efficient manner. Promoting justice requires, in part, acquiring the knowledge for how to do so. In developing (...) this point, London carefully traces these missteps in the main philosophical debates and then resuscitates the importance of questions of justice at the heart of research ethics. In doing so, it provides a transformative corrective for the field. This review critically examines one of the central pillars of London’s egalitarian research imperative approach: the way in which the social value of research is closely linked with minimizing uncertainty among reasonable experts. (shrink)

This paper considers the similarities between Adam Smith's device of the impartial spectator and the use of perspectival devices in common law reasoning. The paper adopts a reading of Smith's device as one involving the exercise of imaginative sympathy by an ordinarily virtuous, and culturally and historically situated, spectator who does not have a stake in the outcome of the scene being evaluated. The point here is to show that the impartial spectator is 1) a device of (...) class='Hi'>common, ordinary virtue – both in the sense of being located in a culture at a specific point in time, and in the sense of possessing only moderate, achievable virtues ; and 2) a device that enables a focus on a situation, which requires imaginative work, emotional engagement and careful, particularised description. Having so modelled Smith's device, the paper shows the similarities between it and the use of perspectival devices in common law reasoning, specifically here via the ‘right-thinking member of society' test in defamation law. (shrink)

Debates about material coincidence tend to start with common-sense intuitions but quickly leave them behind and lead to highly problematic conclusions. Reconciling the latter with common sense is the next stage in the process, which often requires revision of some of the initial beliefs and has been used to adjudicate many rather abstract and technical proposals in the metaphysics of composition and persistence, ranging from natural (constitutionalism) to radical (nihilism). -/- I have no disagreement with this overall strategy: (...) theories do need to turn abstract at some point, move beyond common sense, and eventually force upon us interesting, novel, and often counterintuitive revisions in our overall conceptual scheme. This applies to all theoretical areas, and contemporary metaphysics is no exception. But while the latter is widely regarded as being quite extreme in this respect, I want to argue that, in one sense, it is not extreme enough. I do it by developing a new case of material coincidence that is initially motivated not by common sense but by physical considerations, and is not susceptible to any of the standard solutions. -/- One lesson of science is its ability to expand our imagination beyond the limits of common sense. This may have importance for metaphysics too. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 228-244, May 2022. Private property rights involve coercion against non-owners in their enforcement. As critics of private property point out, this coercion involves a restriction on freedom. Sometimes, such critics suggest that collective property expands rights of access, and therefore expands freedom relative to private property. Does this follow? This paper argues no. To make this argument, I look at two particular forms of collective property: open-access commons and closed-access communes. (...) Both may give rise to potential threats to freedom. This does not mean that collective property never expands freedom relative to private property. It only means we cannot infer from the fact that collective property rules extend rights of access that collective property expands freedom. The upshot is a need to pay more attention to how different property rights work in practice. (shrink)